Association des Fournisseurs d'Accès et de Services
AFA stands for Association des Fournisserurs d’ Acces et de Services which is an Association of Service Providers and Internet Service. AFA is French organization founded in 1997 by some leading internet access providers with the main objective of building a representative structure and ethics specific to the community.[1]
Structure of AFA
Board of Directors:
The board of directors generally consists of five members group which include the founding director and four members which are elected by the General Assembly.
The board of Directors is as follows[1]: Members: France Telecom/Orange
Elected Members:
- SFR
- Bouygues Telecom
- Google France
- Darty
The office:
- Richard Lalande, SFR, President
- Olivier Esper, Google, Secretary
- Pierre-Antoine Badoz, Orange, Treasurer
The permanent staff:
- Carol Gay, Head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs
- Nicolas D'Arcy, Legal - Analyst Content
- Quentin Aoustin Lawyer - Content Analyst
Goals of AFA:
- Promote access between providers and Internet service for club members.
- Encourage the development of the online services and internet.
- Provide training and information for users and professionals for accessing the online services and the internet.
- Develop a safer internet program which will promote safer use and fighting illegal online content.
- Work with various international internet service providers for the development of the Internet and online services.
- Focus primarily on INHOPE Network. INHOPE is Internet hotline Providers in Europe which basically focuses on issues regarding illegal online content.[2]
- Protect and nurture the interests of all the AFA members.
- Boast French culture across the globe, and promote the French language.[3]
Activities:
The main mission of AFA is to promote safer internet services, enhancing the performance of the services and take action against the illegal online content. They wish to fulfill this mission by establishing ethical standards for all the French providers who are the members of AFA. For this AFA carried out various activities to make the internet safe and free of illegal content. [4]
- On 17th November 1998 AFA created the AFA Point of contact. This marked the beginning of a self regulatory body that united the stakeholders representing the fight against illegal content on the internet which seemed to be offensive to human dignity.
- 11th February 1999: AFPI (French Association of Internet Providers) established on 22nd February 1996, joined the AFA. This merger aimed for the growth of AFA in the field of network services.
- On April 13, 2000 AFA started an initiative which urged the government of France to implement the unbundling the loop to foster the development of high speed internet and its services across France.
- AFA became an executive member of INHOPE in December 2000 and later on AFA occupied the seat of the Vice president of INHOPE 18th May 2001. Later in the month on 30th May 2001 INHOPE with the assistance of AFA launched a website which will help people fight against child pornography, internationally. This website provides information about the contact points in various countries which will assist the customers to report any abusive or illegal content for the particular country.
- 26th April, 2006, AFA issued recommendations to fight against spam. They brought out several points which can put a cease on spam.
- AFA published that proposing of various tools to fight the dangerous content available on internet in the international forum on cyber crime held on 31st March and 1st April 2010. It also published various methods to create general awareness on this issue.